It’s easy to see how you can get addicted to Fortnite. The game produces regular adrenaline hits each time your life is in danger – which, let’s face it, is over and over again. And there are regular dopamine hits each time you survive and move on. And every time you die, you feel like, with a bit more luck, you would’ve survived. And so you keep coming back.

But it’s hard to see how Fortnite won’t go the way of other fads – Pokémon GO, Rubik’s Cubes, and Tickle Me Elmo.

That’s because humans, when faced with new situations, will have an initial surge in pleasure. A new girlfriend. A bonus. A new car. But, according to Jonathan Haidt, in The Happiness Hypothesis, we quickly recalibrate.

We become numb to the stimulus.

That means we will inevitably also adjust to the thrills of Fortnite. The adrenaline and dopamine hits will deliver ever-diminishing returns. And so we play it more and more, only to get sick of it more and more.

This is the melancholy of human existence. We constantly crave something new. But the new quickly becomes old. Forcing us to keep looking for the next new thing. But also to heartlessly throw away what was once precious to us.